Research Guide to American Literature
Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
- Updike is generally thought of as a writer who has focused on white Protes-
tant lives. Starting with Rabbit Redux, however, race plays an important role
in Rabbit’s consciousness. He has many debates with Skeeter, who articulates
a Black Panther–type position. Rabbit and others make racist comments in
all of the novels. Students could examine any or all of the novels to form an
argument about what Updike wishes to say about race and racists. Jay Prosser’s
“Updike, Race, and the Postcolonial Project” in The Cambridge Companion
to John Updike and the articles by Sally Robinson and Jan Clausen will pro-
vide helpful insights. Students might also follow Clausen’s lead and compare
Updike’s portrayal of racial issues with that of another contemporary writer,
such as John Edgar Wideman, Toni Morrison, or Philip Roth.
- One of the most debated topics in Updike criticism is his engagement with
Christian theology. Updike himself has pointed critics toward this topic by
citing his interest in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth. What
role does faith, grace, or organized religion play in the Rabbit novels? Does
Updike envision God as loving or punitive? How strong an influence do
Updike’s characters believe God has in their lives, and how do they conduct
themselves in relation to this belief? Boswell’s book, as well as his article
“Updike, Religion, and the Novel of Moral Debate” in The Cambridge Com-
panion to John Updike would be useful for this topic, as would Peter J. Bailey’s
Rabbit (Un)Redeemed: The Drama of Belief in John Updike’s Fiction (2006); the
articles by John Stephen Martin, John M. Neary, and Kyle A. Pasewark; and
the interviews with Edney Silvestre and Jan Nunley in James Plath’s Conversa-
tions with John Updike (1994).
- History plays a role in the Rabbit novels both in the large national, political,
and social sense and in the individual lives of the recurring characters. How do
the characters understand the history happening around them—for instance,
the Apollo moon landing in Rabbit Redux, the gasoline shortage in Rabbit
is Rich, or the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in
Rabbit at Rest? To what extent do the characters feel engaged with history or
divorced from it, and why? Edward Vargo’s “Updike, American History, and
Historical Methodology” and Donald J. Greiner’s “Updike, Rabbit, and the
Myth of American Exceptionalism,” both included in The Cambridge Compan-
ion to John Updike, should be consulted for this topic, as well as Vargo’s “Corn
Chips, Catheters, Toyotas: The Making of History in Rabbit at Rest ” in Broer’s
Rabbit Tales. Dilvo I. Ristoff ’s Updike’s America: The Presence of Contemporary
American History in John Updike’s Rabbit Trilogy (1988) considers the issue in
the first three novels; Ristoff continues his analysis in John Updike’s Rabbit at
Rest: Appropriating History (1998).
- Even after suffering a heart attack and being diagnosed with a serious heart
problem, Rabbit continues to eat too much of the kinds of food his doctor has
told him to avoid. What other examples of dangerous self-indulgence appear
in Rabbit at Rest? Do the characters who overindulge share other personality
traits, or is almost everyone overindulgent? This topic might be extended into
a consideration of the 1980s, the period in which the novel is set. What is
Updike suggesting about the Angstrom family’s relationship to the larger cul-
